Book Review: The Book of Accidents by Chuck Windig

 

The Book of Accidents by Chuck Windig
Hardcover, 530 pages
Published July, 2021 by Del Rey Books


Let me give this warning. I am a big fan of Chuck Windig’s work enough that I don’t give a crap about what the book is about. I see his name on the shelf at the library and it is coming home with me. I didn’t read the dust jacket or look at reviews. I just dived in. Part of my experience with this novel comes from the fact that I knew nothing besides the title and the beautiful but ambiguous cover.

This is a masterpiece if you trust me stop right here and come back because we have lots to talk about. It is hard to review this book without thematic spoilers. Before I get into the spoilery stuff, I’ll warn you. OK…

It is a horror novel and before we get much further, I want to point out how great Windig is at turn of phrases that scratch the chalkboard.

“It was then that he saw the stranger’s face.
It was crawling.
Something moved over it, black dots squirming in the light. Shiny and twitching. Twitch, twitch.”

“Chills ran over him like spiders.”

I liked this next one because in my hometown in Indiana we had a random water outlet tunnel we were all scared of. It was called the Grit Pit, so I smiled when I read this…

“The tunnel became the place of dares: Kids said that if you walked the tunnel at midnight, you might hear a train whistle, and if you didn’t run the half-mile length of darkness at top speed, the conductor would ride along in his ghost train and-
Choo-choo, chopity-chop.
Cut your head off too.”


Now the story, I do enjoy when a book fools me for the first act to think it is about something it isn’t. It would be easy to think after the first prologue to think you are reading a different book, yes there are two prologues. It is a big book so why not indulge your author here a bit, it works. The first prologue might lead some readers to think Windig was rebooting Wes craven’s Shocker.

F.Paul Wilson is a master of misdirecting readers to thinking they are reading one kind of horror novel and hiding the real agenda. Windig pulls this off nicely. For 150 pages I thought this novel was building a Stephen King-ish family drama-driven haunted house story like The Shining. While the structure, size and actual weight of the book is very uncle Stevie this novel concept-wise has more in common with my man Philip K. Dick.

Look I know I do a PKD podcast and you might think I see pink Lazer beams everywhere, I don’t. It is impossible to explain why without major spoilers but several important themes of Phil Dick are here and the influence is clear. If Phil wasn’t a direct influence on Windig 70 years of the Bay Area groundbreaker adding to the zeitgeist are very effectively here.

The Book of Accidents is a horror novel, but it is also science fiction, it is a powerful example of both genres and more deeply it has a theme I related too. At its heart is a character that is about watching everything end and feels helpless to stop it. I think that is something we all can relate to at this moment.

OK, you have been warned. Spoilers ahead….

In the first act of this novel, we are introduced to Edmund Walker Reese, a serial killer that is about to be executed. He disappears in the electric chair and it would be easy to think we are spending the next few hundred pages with his ghost. That is because the main POV of the first act Nathan inherits the home of his estranged father who worked the execution as a prison guard.

I could be wrong, as Windig said in the acknowledgments that he did multiple drafts that ended up looking like very different books. I suspect he is a seat of the pants non-outliner of a writer. Personally, I plan. Sometimes these big books are a result of panter writers who don’t know where they are going.  This novel seems to be benefit of that system.

The Book of Accidents is not a ghost novel at all but a story about multi-verses. This is why I say this novel is Dick-like. There has been plenty of novels that addressed the many-worlds theory, but what I think is important is how small the details. The fact that Windig doesn’t really say one universe or OUR universe is real.

Not only is the story a misdirection but Nate is not the main character, really it is his wife and more importantly his son Oliver that carry the back half of the novel. One amazing aspect is that Oliver at times is both a good guy and bad.  This is one of the best twists and reveals of the book.  

“…he’d subsumed a whole new identity. Into each world he went, he became someone slightly new to appeal to the Oliver of that place: sculpting himself into a key that fit into the hole in every Oliver’s heart.”

If there is any weakness to the novel it is the character of Jed, who is another who conveniently has written about the case. There is a logic for him to be there but I admit I rolled my eyes at first. I understand why Jed was there and it pays off later. Jed knows and understands what is happening, he knows the world is breaking down he also knows the Reese didn’t die in the chair but transitioned…

“He doesn’t belong here. He came one night during a bad storm. Been a plague ever since.”

Great creepy line, Jed’s misery and suicide attempt late in the novel is also a powerful scene. Jed understands that time is running out in every universe and that leads to huge, huge stakes.


“Olly, Listen. You need to understand, What’s happening here is what happened to other worlds I came from. They’re all gone now. Fallen worlds, collapsed into one another – there entropy won. I’m here now…like a prophet. A prophet nobody has listened to so far. This world, your world, it’s going the way of the others. It’s collapsing, and it fall soon. But I think we can fix it, you and I. I think we can save the world.”

The Book of Accidents succeeds as a horror novel but also science fiction. It involves multiverses, time travel, and the end of the world. It is a novel of big ideas built on a foundation of tiny but important details. Large universe-spanning stakes and small character motivations. The push and pull between the big and small makes this novel special.

Big thumbs up and my favorite Chuck Windig novel so far.   

Book Review: The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

 

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water
by Zen Cho 176 pages
Published June 23rd 2020 by Tor.com Publishing
Locus Award Nominee for Best Novella (2021)

I have to apologize off the bat this review got away from me. I read this book almost two weeks ago so I am a little worried the book will not be as fresh in my mind as I normally like. As a huge Wuxia fan in movies and in prose, I was really excited about this book. From the start, I was super excited because it felt enough like a Wuxia story that I was envisioning. I was filling in the Shaw brothers style teahouse sets, heard the soundtrack and sound effects.

Opening in a teahouse The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water is a Wuxia story pure and simple. It has bandits and a monk traveling with them from a religious order. The thieves end up becoming the unlikely protectors of a sacred object. What follows are twists and turns but many of the most interesting moments are in the discoveries along the way for the characters and the slightly different set of Malaysia.

The story is an example of found family, and the characters come together nicely by the end. That is not a very subtle part of the story, more so is the anti-imperialist nature of the underground battle they fight. The Malaysia of this novel is in chaos after an imperialist invasion. All the bandits and rampant crime seem to be a result of that but it is not the most obvious of conflicts.

“Nobody talks about it. It’s not that kind of war.”

“What kind of war is it, then?” said Guet Imm. She looked like she wanted to hit Tet Sang. “A secret war? I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

“Yes,” said Tet Sang. “Open death, open atrocity, open persecution. But a silent war. It’s safer to be silent in these times.”

The story is not about bamboo walks or flying swordsmen (or women), at least those fantastical elements are subtle…

“Signs and portents; a sense of the world of seen things as shifting sands concealing a hidden core of marvels and terrors...."

Zen Cho is a Malaysian author living in Britain. I discovered her work through the Coode St. Podcast. I really enjoyed that interview and reserved this book from the library as I was listening to it.  

One of the best parts of the book comes when one of the main characters Guet Imm learns that the bandit she is most interested in is trans. This is handled well considering the classical era it was set in. That being said gender-swapping, passing as male, and the like is actually fairly common in Wuxia films and novels. None the less it is done very respectfully here. Guet Imm understands because she resented how the order boxed her in to gender roles.

I really liked this novella, well I consider it a short novel. I wanted to love it more but it was exciting and interesting enough that Zen Cho is now on my list of authors to follow.

 

Book Review: Drifter: Stories by David Leo Rice

Drifter: Stories by David Leo Rice

Paperback, 284 pages

Published June 15th 2021 by 11:11 Press

 I got to start by being honest that I had never heard of David Leo Rice before he reached out to me to offer a review copy. I am glad he did as I really enjoyed this collection even if I was skeptical after reading blurbs that compared him to powerhouse writers like Bradbury, Brian Evenson, and Thomas Liggoti. I mean those are some serious towers of weird fiction and normally I happen upon voices like that On my own. OK, that is on me not David Leo Rice I may still think those comparisons are a bit strong but this collection is pretty impressive.

The introduction by Matthew Spellberg who I just learned teaches at Harvard did give some good insight into the collection but the poetic two pages about the author and video stores didn’t land with me.  His inability to rent R-rated movies didn’t feel like the inspiration for this collection of stories. When I think of video stores I think of trashy movies. That made me think of writers like Bryan Smith or Edward Lee. This book is filled with weird stories but nothing about it is trashy.

These stories are more sophisticated than the R-rated movies the author was not allowed to rent by his parents. These have more in common with the tales of Beaumont or Bradbury that young people happen upon at the library and the parents never know about. The tone reminded me of the types of thing T.E.D. Klein was buying and publishing in the Twilight Zone magazine. Anyone old enough to have read those knows there was a quality to them that matched the storytelling skills that Serling and the California sorcerers brought to CBS.     

The book is divided into three sections. HERE – THERE – WHERE. As a structure guy I like that they are different types of stories laid out in sections  The first of them HERE appear to be stories that have a hometown feel to them, the section THERE has many stories that take place across the pond in Europe and the last section are plain weird and surreal. Well they all are weird and somewhat surreal but WHERE is dialed to 11 on the unconventional bizarro scale.

My favorite story of the HERE section was the story House Sitter, which was about the title character it was would Richard Matheson would have called off-beat. This was interesting narrative style of being slightly surreal with what seemed to me to be a ghost story. The House Sitter Point of view gives the outsider feel to the strangeness of the home. This paragraph below is where I first raised an eyebrow took note and dog eared a page.  

“The screams filled first his room and then every room, like a gas leak. He closed his eyes and pictured the father’s pharmaceutical pad fluttering off across the kitchen floor and away to a place where it would never be found.”
     
I also enjoyed Snow Boy and found the balance of weird and vivid impressive.  Notice here in this one paragraph Rice displays a balance for the surreal and grounded…

“He yawned, scratching the surfaces around him, agitating the wreckage of the dead mind he inhabited: the summer steppe, Tarkov at nineteen. A farmhouse, a family at ease around a broad unsanded table with benches on two sides, bowls and platters in the center, high seats for patriarchs at the head and foot, bottles making the rounds.”

From the wreckage of a dead mind to unsanded tables I like the mix of the surreal and the very physically real. This balance is one of the things DLR does very nicely throughout the book. This is a feature, not a bug. Some parts of the prose are very grounded and give a strong sense of the moments the characters inhabit like this moment from the story Out on the coast which helped that story to feel very grounded.

“The ghosts were like mosquitoes-seasonal, pack animals, given to hanging out by the water. Max swatted at them and dabbed blood on his skin with the edge of his shirt, tasting some of it before it soaked in.”

In the THERE section came one of the most powerful stories if not the best of the collection to was one that perfectly balanced the two tones. Hate Room. Mostly made up of mood and tone as a story that at times felt surreal and supernatural but also vivid and alive. Contrast these two quotes from that story.

“They could hear tonight’s guest throwing himself against the walls and barking, screaming out his hatred for god and his wish to be put out of his misery now.”

“He always entered the Hate Room soberly, steeled for the grim business of cleaning the black matter out, but he always left it in rattled, in more of a hurry than he wanted to be.”

I also really enjoyed the short but powerful “The Painless Euthanasia Roller Coaster.” This one part did so much with so little. It was interesting to me that one of the shortest stories in the collection was one of the most powerful I read.

“Over the course of that day, spent, as all days, wandering the old and drafty streets of the city, from the edge of the university where he’s no longer welcome to the alley of used booksellers whose wares no longer speak to him, Anders comes to see that the roller coaster, and nothing else will be the culmination of his tenure on the planet.”

 
The best of the WHERE section is Ultra Max. I don’t have much to say about the most surreal stories of the collection. These are stories that you sorta let wash over you like sitting in a tide. DLR has a way with words so these stories are more like reading a flow than story. I am not complaining I enjoyed these more than anything.

The only thing that held me back on this collection was that I didn’t feel much connection to any characters in the book. The nameless Housesitter and Anders the disgraced character from one of the shortest tales were the first two that come to my mind as I thought about this. This type of style is one that is better suited for the short form. It is why we get so many more Brian Evenson collections than novels.  This is a minor nitpick as I liked the stories overall.

Drifter: Stories is a smart high-class collection of weird fiction. Sometimes horror, sometimes dark humor, and always the product of a fresh voice. OK David Leo Rice you have my attention now and hope my readers will check out. Leave the comparisons aside, I know why we do it but I am not super comfortable with this time. All that matters is David Leo Rice is a writer with a voice and talent worth exploring.  

Book Review: The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

 

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Hardcover, 320 pages

Published March 9th 2021 by Bold Type Books

I am not even entirely sure what I thought this book would be but I am glad that I read it for sure. If I had life to do over again there are a few careers I am jealous of, maybe I wish I had pursued.  The academics who study Science Fiction are number one in my mind but second for sure would be the men and women who get to devote all or most of their time to space and cosmology. I generally assume they are all awesome and intelligent folks who are devoted to understanding the universe.

Enter Chanda Prescod-Weinstein or CPW as I am going to refer to her. This book has more than a few things to say but a great sentence that could set the tone is right here…

“Science is supposedly about asking questions, except about scientists and how science is done.”

While CPW does set the tone beautifully with some universe-spanning, and thought-provoking science. This is important because I feel before she went further, she had to let us all know that she is a serious scientist. The second half of the is highlighting her experiences often negative but not also with scientists and the science community.

I have already seen one or two reviews that didn’t like the mirror this work spun around and focused on the science community. Mad bros will not like the point of view of this progressive thinker whose views are radical in the science community for sure. It is hard to be a trailblazer but honestly, science bros are on notice now.

More scientists with a radical point of view are being trained every day. This younger generation has very different ideas of what is fair and just. Look it is clear that CWP compiled many of her musings over years of doing a blog into this book. This is a science book but it is more about her experience being a person of color, without privilege in science.  

“I believe we can keep what feels wondrous about the search for a mathematical description of the universe while disconnecting this work from its historical place in the hands of violently colonial nation-states.”

Can we decolonize the sciences? Most scientists will reject these ideas out of hand. They refuse to believe that cold hard science can be racist or sexist but the men (mostly) who are the foundations of science are still part of systems. Systems that oppress.

Yeah, I was uncomfortable a few times reading this book. It was challenged me and my assumptions. What better feeling than being moved in any kind of way by a book. I would tell others to read it for that reason. Burst your bubbles. On a political or cosmic scale, this one has both to offer.

Book Review: Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird Edited by Scott Gable & C. Dombrowski

Whether Change: The Revolution Will Be Weird
Edited by Scott Gable & C. Dombrowski

Paperback, 180 pages

Published August 3rd 2021 by Broken Eye Books

Revolution means many things in literature as it does in the world. Fighting for change in the world more often than not means envisioning the world we want to see. In most cases of both mainstream and radical speculative fiction, it means shining a light on a world we hope never to ever see. Broken Eye Books have released steampunk ghost and Lovecraftian anthologies including two volumes of books about campus life at Howie’s made-up university. All fun and exciting stuff but this book which has an activist feel is the most exciting to me.

It features several authors I was aware of and interested in such as Nick Mamatas and Nadia Bulkin and new discoveries like Bogi Takacs.  That is what the best anthologies do, give you a few authors you know and respect while opening your eyes to new talent.

From the back cover:

“Tomorrow is here! Superpowered nationalists, CRISPR babies, alien communists, bloodsucking buildings, holy street justice, otherworldly anarchists, resurrection in the post-apocalypse, and more. There will be no going back.”

My favorite stories in the collection were the stories by Bogi Takacs, Nick Mamatas, and S.B. Divya. Let’s start with my favorite the Takacs tale “A Technical Term, Like Privilege.” This delightfully strange story could be called Bizarro, Surrealist, or Absurdist. I am not such any of those are exactly right but the story is a very unique piece with biological homes, body horror class warfare, and probably more I could identify with a closer look. In this story, the main character lives in a housebeast.

What do I mean by class warfare body horror…

“I glare at the dark purple walls, the rugged, ribbed interior of the housebeast. Why does it need me? I can’t even hate it. I feel bad for it. It’s trapped same as I am. It needs my cheap blood filled with magic and whatever power comes out of a hot dog after it’s digested. I’m surprised my terrible diet hasn’t poisoned it already.

Well, that would certainly be a way to take Revenge on the rental office.”

Yes, this story is the reason I have the Dead Kennedys song “Let’s Lynch the Landlord” stuck in my head. This story is a wonderful metaphor for me to read when the eviction ban was being over turned and debated nationally.  

Nick Mamatas story The Nth International is a comical piece that savagely mocks the billionaire space race and features a communist Alexa AI assistant. It would be easy to laugh off this story as a goofy satire but it is no less radical than anything else in the collection. S.B. Divya writes the most emotionally rich story in the collection, it is subtle but a poetic story that really worked for me.

I loved almost all the stories in one way or another.WC Dunlap’s opener Salt Water to Wine played with mythology in a cool way and Nadia Bulkin’s story Purity was short but more evocative than some novels.

 The exception of Rachel Pollock’s Sarah Memory and Evan J. Peterson’s #wondercabinet. They were both fine stories that I didn’t connect with. Peterson’s story that takes place all in tweets is an interesting experiment just me personally turned me off. I get what he was doing and saw that he executed it fine, there is plenty of excellent commentaries. That said for this structure geek I had a hard time following it.

Whether Change is a great collection. The revolutionary spirit is something that science fiction more often than not happens upon by accident. This is not an earth-shaking genre-redefining collection like Dangerous Visions in the 60s but it doesn’t need to be that. Whether Change is a home for overlooked voices in mainstream publishing, that is as just as important tossing over the table and redefining a genre. So thank Broken Eye Books by checking out this bold anthology.  

If enough of you do, maybe you all can prove me wrong and change everything. I would welcome a future not like these stories but one where these types of voices are mainstream.